Reid, Bryan cheer vote count, which allows for Clinton veto

Benjamin Grove

Thursday, Feb. 10, 2000 | 11:17 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate today passed by a crucial 64-34 vote a bill that establishes rules for shipping nuclear waste to Nevada. President Clinton has threatened to veto the bill, and the Senate needs only 34 votes to sustain a veto.

Sens. Richard Bryan and Harry Reid, both D-Nev., who fought the bill, considered the vote a victory.

"I think the story line here is that public policy triumphs, politics is defeated," Bryan said this morning after the vote.

"We're not here to gloat," Reid said. "We're here to tell everyone this was a tremendous waste of time."

Reid, the Senate Minority Whip whose job it is to ensure that the party has the votes it needs on crucial matters, had said all week that he and Bryan had rounded up the 34 votes needed to sustain the promised veto.

But this morning as the roll call progressed, Reid was visibly lobbying several colleagues on the Senate floor. Reid and Bryan were relieved when Republican Sens. Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island voted against the bill. They were the only two Republicans who opposed it.

The bill's sponsor, Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, was disappointed that he was unable to produce a veto-proof vote.

"It's clear this matter will not be solved on the watch of the Clinton administration," Murkowski said. "This bill is dead until we get a new president."

The House would have to vote on its own nuclear waste storage bill and any differences between the House and Senate bills would have to be resolved before the legislation is forwarded to the president.

The bill aims to bring the first shipments of 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste to Nevada by 2007, three years before a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain is scheduled to be complete.

It also establishes rules for the eventual shipment of the commercial and defense waste that now sits at 103 sites across the country to the mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Congress in 1987 directed the Department of Energy to study Yucca as the only potential repository site, and scientists are still analyzing the mountain to determine if it is suitable. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission ultimately will decide whether waste will be stored there.

In the final hour of debate today, the bill's friends and foes made final pitches.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said the bill would overburden taxpayers and set deadlines for waste shipments that were unrealistic.

"The bill as presented before us does not solve the problems of the nuclear waste program," he said. "In fact, it magnifies some of the problems."

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said "Unfortunately, in part because of a lack of willingness on the part of our Republican colleagues to come to the middle, we have lost a golden opportunity to resolve this matter once and for all."

"We've got a good bill here," Murkowski said in pleading with his Senate colleagues during the debate. "And remember, this is a responsible environmental vote.

"A responsible environmental vote is to move this from 40 states and 80 sites to one central location that is designed for it."

In the end, the Nevada senators won several major changes to the bill, including a provision that allows the Environmental Protection Agency to set radiation standards for Yucca Mountain.

Murkowski and the nuclear power plant operators backing the bill wanted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to set the standards. They fear the EPA's stricter standard could prevent Yucca Mountain from being approved as a waste storage site.

"The only problem with what the EPA is saying is if you make it that safe, you can't make it," Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said in debate Wednesday. "I'm sure my friends from Nevada are hoping that is the case." Craig has been a champion of the bill because he wants nuclear waste stored in his state shipped to Nevada.

The Nevada senators, joined by Bingaman, a key ally on the Energy Committee, objected to the final version of the bill in part because it no longer allowed the Department of Energy to "take title" to the waste as it is now stored at the power plants. Bryan, Reid and Bingaman wanted the DOE to take financial responsibility for caring for the waste on site, but some governors balked, fearing that the arrangement would become permanent.

Debate on the bill began Tuesday and continued much of Wednesday afternoon.

The bill was amended numerous times by Murkowski, who repeatedly tinkered with the legislation, even as late as Wednesday, in an attempt to win the approval of Clinton and two-thirds of the Senate.

"This legislation is a big lemon," Reid said Wednesday, a throwback line to his days as an attorney representing auto dealers. "Whatever they do with it, it's still bad."

Bryan later added, "The old adage that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear is applicable to this piece of legislation. It represents exceedingly bad policy."

Murkowski argued that the bill was necessary to advance the Yucca project and thereby save the nation's nuclear power plants. Some plants face closure because they can no longer store the waste due to cost or state laws, Murkowski said.

"Nobody wants the waste, but you've got to put it somewhere," Murkowski said. "Nevada has been selected for a permanent repository, assuming it can be licensed. That's just a hard fact. It may not be pretty."